Chapter 11 #2
She turned it over with a decisive snap.
The background image was of a deep blue sky.
Across the sweep of white and pink clouds flew a winged creature with a flowing white headdress.
It carried a scythe, a skull neatly tucked behind the crook of its elbow.
The expression on the creature’s face seemed almost fond as it regarded this memento of mortality.
“Death,” Magda said in a tone that I might have described as gloating.
“Well, that went all to hell rather quickly,” Stoker said in an attempt at levity. Magda waved a finger in his face, her expression severe.
“Mock the cards at your peril. They offer you their gifts—a warning of what will come if you do not heed. Misfortune and death.”
I waited for her to tell him he was cursed and to offer to lift the bane for a price, but she made no such overture.
Stoker’s tone gentled. “I meant no offence. Truly.”
She regarded him thoughtfully for a long moment, her head tipped to the side, almost as if she were listening once more to a faraway voice.
Then she nodded, seemingly in agreement.
She reached into her pocket and withdrew a slender leather thong.
From it hung a small bone-white stone with a hole straight through the middle. She held it out to Stoker.
“A rock?” Stoker asked. “For me?”
“A hagstone,” she corrected. “Taken from the shores of the sea in a place where the magic is old and never forgot. It is the strongest luck. Put it on.”
Stoker did as she instructed, slipping it over his head. As the hagstone disappeared into the neck of his shirt, Magda gave a little nod of satisfaction. “Wear it always,” she told him. “Do not remove it for any purpose whatsoever.”
“For how long?” Stoker asked.
“Until the danger is passed. You will know when it is safe to remove it.”
“Thank you,” he said.
He reached for his pocket, but she made an abrupt gesture of dismissal. “Keep your money. You have a pure heart, and pure hearts must be protected.”
Stoker flushed crimson, but he looked pleased just the same. I leant near. “Vampires are not to be entertained as real, but a protective talisman is logical and scientific?” I murmured.
“Do not be rude to our hostess,” he said back through gritted teeth.
“Just admit you are as susceptible as the rest of us to superstition,” I replied.
Magda gave me an impenetrable look. “You see more than you admit, lordling. Remember my words, and the stone will protect you.” Stoker touched the talisman through the fabric of his shirt, and Magda inclined her head before turning to Brisbane.
“Now we eat.”
This was apparently the etiquette of such situations, for Brisbane did not attempt to dissuade her.
She went to the door and issued a series of instructions.
In a very short time we had been supplied with bowls of stew and hunks of bread.
A thin film of grease puddled atop the surface of the stew, issuing forth a rich, appetising aroma.
There was no butter for the bread, but it was freshly baked and delicious.
I dug my spoon into the stew, noticing only after I had taken a bite that Lady Julia was watching me in amusement.
“What?” I murmured. “Have I committed an offence?”
“Quite the opposite,” she replied. “The Romany like a stranger who appreciates their delicacies.”
“Delicacy?” I stared down at the dark broth swimming with chunks of meat and vegetables.
“Hotchi-witchi,” Magda informed me.
“Hedgehog,” Lady Julia added.
“Oh,” I said in some surprise.
“Poaching laws have always been strict,” Brisbane explained. “They do not dissuade the opportunistic and the hungry, but Romany have learnt to supplement with smaller game—rabbits, squirrels, and hedgehogs to name a few.”
“I think it is delicious,” Stoker stated, scraping the bottom of his bowl.
Magda gave him a fond smile. “You must have another portion. Keep up your strength, lordling.” This time the nickname seemed affectionate, and she ladled out another serving of the stew, taking care to give Stoker the best bits.
As they ate, Stoker and Brisbane described the boy we were looking for to Magda, who listened attentively, her gaze fixed upon Stoker’s face.
She nodded several times and they fell into a quiet, intent conversation.
After a few moments, she rose and went to the door, speaking rapidly to the bowler-hatted fellow, who was still lingering outside.
When she returned, she gave Stoker the last of the bread, pressing it into his unwilling hands with a gesture of finality.
Lady Julia leaned near to me. “I have never seen Magda quite so accommodating, especially to a gorgio. She worked in my household for some time and still only barely tolerates me.”
“Stoker has a curious effect on women of all ages,” I told her. “Female creatures of every variety, in fact. They swarm to him like the proverbial moths to his particular flame. I have learnt to expect it.”
Her smile was rueful. “I have much the same trouble with Brisbane. I do not doubt his loyalty for a minute, but his previous entanglements have occasionally proven to be excessively annoying.”
“I could write a novel about the depredations of Stoker’s former wife, and people would think it the grossest exaggeration,” I confided.
Lady Julia’s eyes narrowed. “Brisbane had a lover in his past who wanted to kill me.”
“So does Stoker!” I exclaimed in an excited whisper. “It is consoling to speak to someone who actually understands my situation.”
We glanced to where our menfolk were sitting in animated conversation with Magda, the old woman’s face agleam with fondness for them both.
Lady Julia sighed. “It is the price one must pay for loving men of such extraordinary talents.”
“If only they were not quite so heedless of their own well-being. Does Brisbane do thoroughly reckless things?”
“He once leapt blindly off the roof of a building at full pelt,” she told me. “Stoker?”
“Threw himself into the sea to swim an impossible distance to fetch help when I was stranded on a rock being submerged by a rising tide.”
“And is he, in spite of this habitual imprudence, almost insultingly obsessed with your own safety?”
“It is a source of constant conflict between us,” I assured her.
“Brisbane treats me as if I were made of spun glass,” she replied.
“And ought to be wrapped in cotton wool and locked in a box? I am familiar with the mood.”
“He is illogical to the point of hysteria about the matter,” Lady Julia said. “Just because I have occasionally found myself nearly incinerated. Or exploded. Or poisoned.”
“Or drowned. Or carried out to sea and thrown overboard. Or shot,” I added, thinking of my own near brushes with death.
“What they fail to realise is that these situations have not been of our making. They have been entirely the fault of the criminals we have been pursuing. And furthermore,” I added, warming to my theme, “we have indeed faced deadly peril upon numerous occasions, but we have survived them all. Would it be so dreadful to actually give us credit for those accomplishments? No, they would rather hover about like overattentive nannies.”
“Men,” Lady Julia said darkly.
As if sensing our scrutiny, Brisbane and Stoker turned as one and looked at us.
“Stoker,” Brisbane said suddenly, “the women are talking. And I do not know about you, but my ears feel distinctly singed.”
“As do mine,” Stoker agreed. He looked from Lady Julia to me. “What have you two been saying?”
“Nothing of importance,” Lady Julia hastened to assure him. She turned to Magda. “Do you know the boy we’ve come about? The one who may have witnessed a crime?”
“He is a poshrat, like this one,” she replied with a nod towards Brisbane.
“He has only half blood?” Lady Julia asked.
Magda shrugged. “His father was one of us, but he married outside of his clan—a thin little gorgio girl who died in childbed her first winter travelling. The boy’s father died not long after.”
“He is orphaned?” Stoker asked in real concern.
His heart was always softened at the thought of any child in peril.
Many was the time he had pressed the last coin in his pocket upon a street urchin begging for the price of a bit of bread.
And more than once he had handed over a pound note—a veritable fortune—when he had nothing else at hand.
“How does the child get by with no family?”
“How do any of us?” Magda returned with a short laugh. “By our wits.”
There was a scratching at the door of the vardo, and Magda smiled. “There he is now.”